Nora fam­ily bid to bring her home...

...as fam­ily hit out at ‘un­help­ful’ com­ments over mys­tery death

THE dev­as­tated fam­ily of Nora Quoirin yes­ter­day hit out at “un­help­ful” com­ments about her death as the tragic teenager’s body was col­lected from a Malaysian hos­pi­tal.

The un­clothed body of the 15-yearold, who had spe­cial needs, was dis­cov­ered on Tues­day 2km from a jun­gle hol­i­day re­sort where the fam­ily had been stay­ing.

In a state­ment is­sued yes­ter­day the fam­ily asked peo­ple only to rely on com­ments is­sued on their be­half by the Lu­cie Black­man Trust.

They said: “Any other com­ments and views are those of the speaker and do not nec­es­sar­ily re­flect the views of the im­me­di­ate fam­ily or an ac­cu­rate por­trayal of the facts.

“Nora’s fam­ily are con­cerned that con­tin­ued re­ports of com­ments such as those re­cently re­ported are un­help­ful and may hin­der any in­ves­ti­ga­tions, as well as caus­ing con­fu­sion and dis­tress for them.

REPA­TRI­A­TION

“The Lu­cie Black­man Trust is ar­rang­ing repa­tri­a­tion of Nora’s body and no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion con­cern­ing this, in­clud­ing dates or des­ti­na­tions, will be re­leased at this point.”

Nora’s re­mains were taken from the Tuanku Ja’afar mor­tu­ary un­der po­lice es­cort shortly after noon lo­cal time, ac­cord­ing to re­ports, although her par­ents Se­bastien and Me­abh were not present.

Po­lice chief Mo­hamad Mat Yu­sop said: “I was told by hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials that the body has just been claimed – the body has been taken to Kuala Lumpur In­ter­na­tional Air­port.”

Malaysian po­lice said fol­low­ing a post­mortem

Nora starved after her dis­ap­pear­ance and there was no ev­i­dence of ab­duc­tion or kid­nap­ping “for the time be­ing”.

The fam­ily con­firmed in yes­ter­day’s state­ment that no re­ward pay­ments were made prior to the dis­cov­ery of

Nora’s body, and noted a po­lice hot­line re­mains open for those with in­for­ma­tion.

After meet­ing Malaysia’s deputy prime min­is­ter on Fri­day, her fam­ily said they are “strug­gling to un­der­stand the events of the last 10 days”.

The state­ment, is­sued on their be­half by LBT, added: “The ini­tial post­mortem re­sults have given some in­for­ma­tion that helps us to un­der­stand

Nora’s cause of death.

“But our beau­ti­ful in­no­cent girl died in ex­tremely com­plex cir­cum­stances and we are hop­ing that soon we will have more an­swers to our many ques­tions.”

Malaysian po­lice said Nora is likely to have spent a week in the jun­gle on her own. The teenager, who was born with the brain de­fect holo­pros­en­cephaly and was de­scribed by her fam­ily as “vul­ner­a­ble”, went miss­ing from the re­sort of Dusun on Sun­day, Au­gust 4.

The 15-year-old had died be­tween two and four days be­fore her body was dis­cov­ered be­side a wa­ter­fall, a post­mortem ex­am­i­na­tion re­vealed. Lead­ing de­tec­tive in the Madeleine McCann case has been ad­vis­ing the Quoirin fam­ily, de­mand­ing Malaysia po­lice ad­dress “dark unan­swered ques­tions”.

In a TV in­ter­view on Fri­day ex-po­lice­man Jim Gam­ble claimed the win­dow where the teen was stay­ing “could have been opened from out­side”.

Mr Gam­ble, who is for­mer chief ex­ec­u­tive of the UK Child Ex­ploita­tion and On­line Pro­tec­tion Cen­tre, said the alu­minium glass win­dow was faulty and could not be locked from inside.

He added: “In the villa we do know the down­stairs win­dow was bro­ken, so it couldn’t have been locked by the fam­ily and could have been opened from out­side.

“I un­der­stand why in the af­ter­math of the in­terim re­sults of the post­mortem, there are still ques­tions. We don’t know how she got from the villa to the lo­ca­tion where she was found.

We need to un­der­stand, why over a pe­riod of six or seven days while she was alive, with in­tense, well-re­sourced search­ing go­ing on in the area, she wasn’t seen or lo­cated.”

A post­mortem in­di­cated Nora died from in­ter­nal bleed­ing, likely from pro­longed hunger and stress “two to three days” be­fore her body was found 2km from where she was last seen.

It re­mains un­clear whether her Belfast-born mum Me­abh, 45 and 47-year-old French dad Se­bastien will ask for a sec­ond post­mortem.

The fam­ily said they will be bring­ing Nora’s re­mains home “where she will fi­nally be laid to rest, close to her lov­ing fam­i­lies in France and Ire­land”.

They also thanked Malaysian au­thor­i­ties and search par­ties for their ef­forts.

Mo­hamad Mat Yu­sop, Negeri Sem­bi­lan state po­lice chief, said on Thurs­day the post­mortem had found no ev­i­dence the teenager had been ab­ducted or raped.

He said she had died from in­testi­nal bleed­ing, most likely due to star­va­tion and stress.

Mr Yu­sop added: “The cause of death was up­per gas­troin­testi­nal bleed­ing due to duo­de­nal ul­cer, com­pli­cated with per­fo­ra­tion – it could be due to a lack of food for a long pe­riod of time and due to pro­longed stress.”

He said there was bruises on her legs but these would not have caused her death.

The LBT said yes­ter­day on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions would con­tinue in France as is stan­dard prac­tice for over­seas cases in­volv­ing its cit­i­zens.

Par­ents Me­abh & Se­bastien Quoirin
HEART­BREAK
Res­cuers, left, and where Nora was found
Nora Quoirin who died in jun­gle
SEARCH TEAM
MUCH LOVED